I was playing KOTOR II the other day and I was trying to get influence with Visas, so I did this quest on Nar Shadaa in which you have an option of freeing an astromech droid from a junk dealer or the darkside option which is supposed to get you influence with her. That was to grab the droid's memory core and scrap the body, and then extort its friend/coworker droid into giving me some of its integral parts. Needless to say, not only did I lose influence with T3 (and he wasn't even there!!), but I also immediately felt and loaded a previous save so I could do the light side version.

Same. I played KOTOR countless of times and I wanted to experience all possible endings, but I had to made myself play through DS. I really enjoyed the nearly-glowing face my Revan as he was so amazing and lightside-ish.

Well, it is kind of hard to define where consciousness of the AI starts, really. One could argue that the "present-day" SW Fifth-Degree droids are mindless droids (because that is essentially how they're programmed). Yet look at LB from KOTOR comics. Even though he's Fifth-Degree himself, there is still something about him which will probably be explained in later issues. Even thugh being mainly stupid, LB does have a certain level of understanding and the ability to make a progress (which is one of the components in the definition of intelligence).

I honestly have to wonder why certain types of droids were made/given sentience/sapience. Protocol droids, for instance. Much as I love Threepio... he's a translator. Seriously, he could be reduced to a speaker grille and dictionary to be worn on a lapel. Like the ST combadge, for comparison.